Metalshark

@CPotter any news on queue management for LTX 2020

The problem you have seems to be a ground loop (I cannot verify this) - look at the previous replies. I have given plenty for you to look into. Am going to stop responding on this now as it's getting quite heated.

It's a "mains conditioner", it performs filtering.

Also an example UPS capable of handling 840W (assuming this is enough for your purposes) which is Prime and refundable check out: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TZNQ250 This unit has an awful battery, so it's cheap for a reason, but should do line-interactive enough for your purposes. The display may also help you diagnose what's going on.

As an example filtering extension cable (that's Prime and refundable) check out: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tacima-6-Way-Mains-Conditioner-black/dp/B00UB0G4DQ

@grangervoldemort this sounds like a ground loop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_loop_(electricity) Chances are they've mixed up the negative and ground cables for the light fittings (common mistake) but other variations are known to happen. They'll work that way but introduce noise. The following guide should help them: https://www.practicaldiy.com/electrics/lighting-wiring/light-wiring-loop.php The RCD's you desire would detect this and trip all the time (detects that it's using the earth wires instead of the negative for ground). Getting a filtering power cable/extension from Amazon (make sure it's a Prime one and therefore refundable) lets you try it out and should fix the issue without the expense and maintenance of a UPS (which in fairness would also fix the issue). A filtering cable just tries to remove the noisy signal on the power line. If you want to deep dive on the issue may I recommend: https://web.mit.edu/jhawk/tmp/p/EST016_Ground_Loops_handout.pdf @Spotty is correct. Be careful with the council and/or insurers due to part P regulations since 2013 (BS 7671) https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/find-an-electrician/building-regulations/england/ although I appreciate this is out of your hands, but the more you know right (like the bit about it being unlawful)? An electrician refusing to quote for the unknown seems perfectly reasonable. Wouldn't think of them as "dodgy". They could give you a quotation with caveats based on assumptions if they felt it worth their time, but there's a lot of work out there. Also would suggest not discussing a difficult personal situation on a public forum, you never know what may come back to haunt/bite. Disclaimer: I work for a security company who carries out some BS 7671 work to install fused spurs, etc as part of standard installation.

@grangervoldemort head parking is more a Seagate issue nowadays. It's configurable on Western Digital drives (many utilities to change it for their entire range) and you'll not hit issues with the default (20 minutes of inactivity before parking which takes 2-3 seconds to respin back up to full speed). TLER is only an issue when the drive starts failing exactly as @tikker describes. If you're thinking about performance then Tom's Hardware has some decent analysis: https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/wd-red-10tb-8tb-nas-hdd,review-34230-2.html https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/seagate-barracuda-pro-10tb-hdd,review-34183-2.html TL;DR Seagate wins Sequential and WD Red wins random

@CPotter Thank you! Queue management gets my vote if it comes down to a choice. The 2+ hour queues sucked a lot of enjoyment out of the event, with the net effect of making people want to do less instead of more. It was disheartening to see people queue up behind us, wait for over an hour, then give up and do something else (although got very well acquainted with folk both before and after us). On the positive side at least the low temps got a lot of us being creative at balancing FPS vs Power Viruses and hot air recycling techniques. Silva from Dreamhack also feels bad about it as he HAD THE POWA!

Yes. Then every big update, connect the old SSD, do a clone of the system partition onto the old SSD and disconnect it again. Or however often you feel comfortable. That way if disaster strikes you can just hook up the old SSD and get going again. There are other ways to do things of course. But this should let you keep that old drive from receiving too many writes. If you'd prefer to do file-based backups (not whole drive clones) to the old drive (the other idea that seems sensible) then would advocate getting some friendly free software with a nice graphical interface and a proven track record, of which I'm afraid I'm no help ?

DriveImage XML is my go-to for free cloning if you wanted to: 1) clone the 500GB to the 1TB as a partition 2) make a second 500GB partition using Windows (doesn't need DriveImage XML) 3) clone the first partition to the 500GB later on at back-up time, to give you a bootable backup Otherwise I tend to script things for backing up (old school style) - however there will likely be much better free backup software to handle this. As you've already got important data backed up @jstudrawa seems to have the better idea though.

You need to add drive letters to the drives without any. So right click on the partition for Disk 0 and click "Change Drive Letter and Paths" then pick a free drive letter. Then repeat for Disk 1 and Disk 3. Don't do this for Disk 2's second partition.

Yeah, you can do this. Although performance will take a hammering and you'll be wearing the drives out more. Doing something like using the old 500GB SSD as a backup device and putting everything on the new one may make more sense.

@SomeTechScrub would start with installing your chipset drivers, assuming you don't have a card plugged in for RAID, etc. Looking up your motherboard drivers here will help (grab the latest, not the ones on the CD/USB that came with the board). Then as @Eumel2 says initialise them if they still do not appear.

@grangervoldemort just double-checked https://www.wd.com/solutions/nasware-technology.html and the error recovery is the only difference I can see anyone caring about (happy to be corrected here).

The difference you'll care about is TLER: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_recovery_control#Desktop_computers_and_TLER If an error is detected, instead of immediately handling the error like a desktop drive (a WD Blue/Black for instance) it jams up for 7 seconds so that a RAID controller has a chance to handle the error instead. So you'll certainly notice it hanging more if the drive becomes degraded. Otherwise, everything else is more or less like a normal drive. WD's warranty doesn't mention anything special about on/off cycles (which are recorded in S.M.A.R.T.) Would personally grab the Barracuda Pros, unless you are using RAID 1 and a dedicated RAID controller (e.g. not software RAID).